1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to implementation of remote memory ring buffers in data processing systems. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention relate to implementing a remote memory ring buffer in a cluster of data processing nodes such as fabric-attached Server on a Chip (SoC) nodes.
2. Description of Related Art
A ring buffer is a memory structure (i.e., an array). A first element in a ring buffer is followed by the last. In this regard, a ring buffer can be envisioned as being circular.
In the context of SoC nodes, it is known to implement one or more shared memory ring buffers in a manner whereby different data processing cores of a single SoC node can perform GET actions and/or PUT actions (i.e., GET/PUT actions) to a common ring buffer in shared memory (i.e., GET/PUT functionality via shared memory ring buffer). A memory controller of the single SoC node ensures that GET/PUT actions of one of the data processing cores are completed without interruption by other GET/PUT actions of the same of a different one of the data processing cores. The implementation of a shared memory ring buffer in this manner enables the different data processing cores of the single SoC node to store and retrieve information from the shared memory ring buffer.
In such a single SoC node implementation of a shared memory ring buffer, shared memory GET/PUT functionality is supported in hardware (HW) between different data processing cores of the SoC node. Furthermore, such a single SoC node implementation of a remote memory ring buffer is undesirably limiting in that it does not accommodate remote memory GET/PUT functionality by a traditional cluster of shared-nothing, network connected nodes.
Accordingly, implementing remote memory GET/PUT functionality via one or more remote memory ring buffers by a cluster of fabric-attached SoC nodes without involvement of an OS kernel of the SoC nodes would be advantageous, useful and desirable.